You should consider a business T1 line if your business could benefit from a highly reliable phone and Internet service that will decrease your overall telecom costs. If your business has more than 7 individual phone lines and your employees use the Internet, your business is a good candidate to reduce expenses with a business T1 line.

What Exactly is a T1 Line?

A T1 line is a dedicated line carrying digital data between your location and your phone company's customer office. It has a throughput of 1.544 Mbps that you can imagine as being divided into 24 channels.

When a business T1 line is devoted to phone service, it can process 24 simultaneous external phone calls. Each call is transmitted on a discrete "channel" or slice of the data stream. Your T1 line and your internal phone lines plug into a PBX device that is your private branch exchange--like your own phone company. The PBX allows internal calling with a 3 or 4 digit extension, provides functions like voice mail, call waiting, hunt groups, music on hold, and other features. Your PBX also handles 24 external calls concurrently. For a lot of businesses this handles the external calling requirements of 100 or more employees.

An alternate adaptation of T1 is T1 PRI which is often found in customer service centers where customer reps review customer records with your customers. With T1 PRI, there are 23 voice channels and a data channel that can be attached to a server. When a customer calls, the caller ID information is passed to the server which pulls up and displays the customer record on the computer screen of the customer representative as they receive the incoming call.

Your business T1 line can be devoted to Internet access. You could plug the T1 line into a card in your LAN server to provide a bandwidth of 1.544 Mbps to the Internet. This bandwidth is equivalent to 30 to 60 dialup connections (depending on the dialup line quality). Since the T1 line is digital, there will be no degradation caused by crosstalk or line noise.

Alternately, your T1 line may integrate both phone and Internet services. You will dedicate a certain number of "channels" to phone service and the rest to the Internet. An added card in the PBX streams the Internet data to an interface card in your LAN server. This is a popular option for lots of small and medium sized businesses.

How Will You Cut Costs With a Business T1 Line?

Think about a business that wants to replace their present individual phone lines and their Internet service provider with a T1 line. The main reduction in costs is due to the elimination of the monthly charges for the individual phone lines as well as your Internet access charges.

Your continuing overhead will include a monthly lease charge for the T1 line and phone charges which come bundled with the T1 line. Your cost for a T1 line principally depends on the distance between your business and the phone company's customer office. In addition, there will be one time charges for the PBX device and other interface devices and cabling that your particular physical layout requires. There will also be continuing maintenance fees associated with the PBX and other devices.

Many small and medium businesses have found a T1 line to be an excellent means to reduce expenses as well as offer higher quality and reliability to their customers and employees. You should get a business T1 line quote to determine if this is an effective choice for your business.